Rock ’N’ Roll, The Autopsy

Rock ’n’ Roll is dead, buried, gone and no one even showed up to mourn at its graveside. Or attend the Celebration of Death.

It was once promised that “Rock ’n’ Roll Will Never Die,” but anyone with an AM radio knows that by the late 1980s rock music was past its expiration date. Only corporate life support kept it propped up in front of stadium crowds too young and stupid to realize they were cheering the stuff rock originally, and even lately, was sneering at.

Rage Against the Machine at Madison Square Garden? I laugh.

Now R&R’s gone and I think we an all agree the world is a better place without it. 

Show of hands, please? Show of hands? Raise your hand if you miss rock ’n’ roll music. Anyone?

Well, there you have it. It’s gone, unlamented, and ripe for an autopsy. Please hold your applause until the end.

Rock music was brought to being by a recording industry that sniffed a trend and, tentatively at first, breathed life into it by honing in on its target audience: Teenagers in the 1950s.

This demographic, once convinced it was a separate, special generational segment, was coaxed into a faux rebel identity costumed in black jackets, tight trousers, a motorcycle if your parents would buy you one, greasy hair and rock n roll music.

That was the stage, the rebel attitude was the wallpaper, and rock ’n’ roll was the soundtrack, with crappy movies (Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider) providing all three manufactured images for teens to emulate.

These attitudinal cues are mostly gone today, but during their forgivably brief era they helped poison families (children and parents at war with each other) and communities by fostering a sense of alienation from (of all things!) a society so free and open it welcomed, indulged and help nurture their bitter complaints. 

Most of the protests and whining had to do with middle class values, not being allowed to smoke marijuana, hating cops, America and anyone over 30 years old. During extended stretches of being unemployed, our childish intellectuals demanded to roam around their rotten country in VW vans, all in a sweat to get back to the land, minus occasional stops at Woodstock, Taos, Big Sur and Ukiah.

“Back to the Land.” As if. Like they were all potato farmers who’d spent the past 20 years harvesting french fries in Idaho. 

The music evolved, or at least accommodated its aging teen audience with programming more suitable for 20-year-old college graduates who were tuning out, turning on, and dropping in at welfare offices to pick up food stamps. Rock music showed the way, instructing the traveling lemmings to take a lot of drugs, do their own thing and eat brown rice. 

Everything was electric by this point, with ex-folkie preacher/protest singer Bob Dylan serving as both lightning rod and ground wire. His fanatic followers wanted to know Where It’s At, Man, and demanded answers to the Cosmic Riddle. Pop music went far out and into heavy metal; Bob went to Nashville. 

He recorded a semi-folkie Christian album called John Wesley Harding, and a dozen years later explained his hard-earned truth: The answer(s) were found in Biblical Scripture, and three Born Again albums hammered it home. 

His dwindling fan base stamped its feet, shook tiny clenched fists and made potty in their Depends.

The lemmings then had seizures and demanded answers from astrological acid-drenched cosmic Pink Floydiotics. (They’re still waiting.) Bob demurred.

We lurched onward, though not as Christian Soldiers, but into rock mutations spawning country rock, glitter rock, Disco, punk rock and New Wave, before finally collapsing over a cliff to the tune of (c)rap, hip hop, techno pop and industrial noise.

Along the way Jimi, Janis, Jim and Keith died from drugs; Elvis died from being Elvis, and Paul died barefoot. Mick the Corpse kept singing Satisfaction, the music died, the Beatles committed suicide and Wayne Kramer finally caught a dose of rigor mortis. Next, subtract in ‘We Will We Will Rock You,’ Milli Vanilli, ‘We Are the World’ and Billy Joel. Whew! Then smoke machines, Rolling Stone magazine, silly onstage costumes, and creative exhaustion.

Cause of Death: Long overdue maturation of elderly teenage audience.

(Tom Hine, who writes this stuff under the TWK byline, has no room to scold; he went to Woodstock. If that’s not enough, two weeks ago he went to see an Elvis impersonator, live and on stage!)